“Eye-catching and ear-bashing.” That’s how Peter Carlson with the Washington Post described Matthew Lesko back in 2007.1
If you were watching cable TV in the late 90s (in the U.S.) you couldn’t escape Matthew Lesko. He was loud, relentless, and unforgettable. But beyond the bright suits littered with question marks and wild claims, his brand holds profound, though sometimes uncomfortable, lessons for modern marketers. Let’s unpack Lesko’s origin story and discover why the secret to effective advertising lies in assuming everyone is “brushing their teeth” at all times.
A Cringe Star Is Born
Matthew Lesko was finally successful in the early 80s—but bored.
After a couple of failed businesses in the ‘70s, Lesko found his niche. “Some company called and said they wanted to start a chain of pasta stores and wanted to know what’s the market for pasta. I found a guy in the Commerce Department who studies the pasta industry. That’s all he does.”2
Lesko began to organize the free information he gathered from government experts for $10k to “fat cats” at Fortune 500 companies, but he grew tired of “helping rich people.” He also decided that his next venture had to be fun. “If I fail, f– it, it doesn’t matter.”3
This was the inciting incident that created a 90s icon.
The business idea came next. Lesko decided to take the same approach he used for corporations and apply it to everyday people by publishing books. His process was straightforward: he would simply gather the information, paste it between a custom-designed cover, and give it a title. “I didn’t write a lick,” Lesko claims.
Next, Lesko would contact the local news in small towns and book interviews on their newscasts.
Matthew Lesko saw every TV appearance as a challenge to hijack attention. When an anchor announced, “Up next, Matthew Lesko to talk about government information,” he ran a scene in his head: the viewer, bored by anything related to “government programs,” finally had a chance to get up, flick on the bathroom light, and start brushing their teeth to get ready for the day, barely listening.
Lesko engineered his performance for this perceived reality. He aimed for a level of sheer, wild distraction that would force the viewer to stop—mid-brush—and shout around the corner, “What’s that asshole talking about?”
The final touch was the costume.
For years, Lesko’s suits would slowly start to get a bit quirky here and there, but no question marks yet. When he appeared on Letterman in 1990, he looked entirely different from the iconic image that would become fossilized in our collective memory by the end of the decade.
By 1998, to prepare for his first ad campaign, Lesko took the plunge and ditched his expensive corporate suit for the cheapest one he could find. Then, he hired someone at a mall kiosk to embroider question marks all over it.
Matthew Lesko’s Guide to Attention: Reach, Distinctiveness, and the Cost of Cringe
Matthew Lesko wasn’t likable. He had a shit product. He was tacky. But he’s been booked on Oprah, Larry King, and Letterman, and has sold over 3 million copies of 100 books, tapes, and DVDs.
Most advertisers look down on people like Matthew Lesko. No creativity. No product. No class. And they’re right.
But the industry would be wise to take a page out of his book, even if many of those pages should be crumpled up and thrown in the trash—“Kobe!”
What can advertisers learn from Matthew Lesko?
1. Use The “Bathroom Rule” As Your Guide
Brands need to be seen, heard, and—most crucially—remembered. In today’s distracted world, the challenge isn’t just delivering an ad; it’s designing one that cuts through the mental noise.
The key lesson from Matthew Lesko’s high-impact advertising is what I’m calling the “Bathroom Rule”: Always assume your audience is mentally (or literally) in the bathroom around the corner brushing their teeth, and find a way to instantly command attention.
Every Second Must Count
If your brand is investing valuable ad spend, you cannot afford to be ignored. Your absolute priority must be ensuring that every second of your ad is unmistakably branded. This means sacrificing the common advertising mistake of slow-burn “storytelling” or emotional build-up at the expense of early brand identification.
Whenever a distracted viewer glances up, scrolls past, or returns their attention, they must immediately encounter your brand assets—logo, jingle, mascot, sonic logo, packaging. If you delay your branding, you are wasting precious airtime and budget on an ad that will be forgotten.
The Distinctive Power of Sound
While visual distinctiveness is critical, audio is an often-underestimated tool for cutting through when eyes are diverted.
Lesko himself, despite not having a specific sonic logo or jingle, used an overwhelming vocal energy and persona that was instantly recognizable, even if you weren’t looking at his famous question mark suit. He achieved audio distinctiveness through sheer intensity.
Other audio tools include:
Jingles - According to research from Distinctive Bat, they are the single most effective form of brand asset for achieving both “fame” and “uniqueness.”4
Sonic Logos - A short audio cue at the beginning of and end of an ad can ensure immediate recognition, even if subconscious.
Brand Mascots - Despite not typically thought of as an audio asset without their bodies to accompany them, brand mascots like the Geico Gecko’s, with his British voice is instantly recognizable on American radio and podcasts. The Pillsbury Doughboy’s iconic chuckle or Colonel Sanders’ Southern draw also transform simple characters into audio brand signatures.
Whether you are trying to cut through on video when viewers are literally in the bathroom, capture the attention of those mindlessly scrolling social media, or invest in audio-only platforms, you cannot afford to waste a single dollar of ad spend.
By rigorously adhering to the “Bathroom Rule,” you force a valuable check on every ad production: If they only hear or see a flicker, will they know it was us? If the answer is no, you haven’t invested. You’ve gambled.
2. Win With Brute-Force Mental Availability
Matthew Lesko’s omnipresence in the 1990s offers a blueprint for achieving mental availability—being easily thought of—that is profoundly relevant to today’s media environment. Though he operated in a simpler era, his strategy of saturation is the core lesson for cutting through modern clutter.
Lesko’s loud, repetitive, and wild persona, over the course of years, ensured his message was seen. Today, consumers are bombarded with up to 100 ads per day across fragmented platforms.5
To maintain a consistent presence on consumers’ screens, you must invest in maximum reach targeting all category buyers. When resources are limited, maximize the budget you do have toward this goal. Since roughly 95% of potential category buyers are not in market at any given time,6 sales activation and performance marketing efforts inevitably plateau. To sustain market share growth, you must also invest in long-term brand-building.
From Reach To Attention
Showing up is the essential first step, but it is not enough. Once you get in front of eyeballs, you have to make every second count. The reality is bleak: According to Karen Nelson-Field, 85% of ads fail to reach the 2.5-second attention threshold for effectiveness,7 and active resistance is high (e.g., 64–66% of video ads and 46% of podcast ads are skipped8).
A primary reason for this lack of attention is a lack of distinctive branding. Ipsos estimates that only around 15% of brand assets are “truly distinctive.”9 This is both bad and good news. It’s bad because, statistically, your current assets likely blend in. But it’s good because distinctiveness is arguably easier than ever to achieve.
Consistent creative devices and distinctive brand assets—or “fluent Devices,” as coined by System1 Group and Orlando Wood—have been on a steep decline in recent years, yet they are 23% more likely to generate very large market share gain, and 22% more likely to generate very large profit gain effects.10
The world is saturated with subtle, look-alike branding. Seize the opportunity to stand out. It’s time to invest in distinctiveness (I got your back). Matthew Lesko’s ultimate lesson is clear: Brute-force mental availability can sometimes overcome poor execution.
3. Be Careful Of Cringe
While Lesko achieved the essential goal of reach, his methods came at a steep price: inefficiency.
Lesko’s biggest error was systematically alienating the light buyer—the “workhorses” of brand growth responsible for half of a brand’s revenue.11 His cringe persona and the unbelievable claims about “free money”—which he admitted few people actually received, with a whopping 10% of buyers returning his products—actively repelled many in this massive group.
This failure is explained by the principle of “counter-argument,” a trap warned against by advertising psychologist Robert Heath.12
According to Heath, advertising that is overly emotional (like social purpose campaigns), aggressive, or unbelievable causes viewers to roll their eyes. This resistance makes them less likely to buy, not more.
In the 1990s, Lesko succeeded only because his immense reach on cheap cable time compensated for his inherently low conversion rate. Heath suggests using “covert emotion”—subtle, enjoyable branding (such as the Geico Gecko)—to build brand association without generating the audience resistance that destroyed Lesko’s efficiency.
Where Is Matthew Lesko Now?
So, where is Matthew Lesko now? Still doing his thing.
I actually met Matthew Lesko back in 2011. He was promoting a documentary someone else made about him. Both his documentary and my own were selections in the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival. Lesko’s documentary was eventually picked up by Vice and released a few years later. Mine was not.*
In person, Lasko was far less cloying. Dare I say, he was even pleasant to talk to. I don’t remember what we talked about for those couple of minutes, but at the time, I hadn’t seen him on my TV in a decade or longer. In fact, he hasn’t reappeared on my TV screen since.
Lesko’s reliance on traditional ad spend seems to have ended shortly after the early 2000s. By 2007, he was already contacting freelancers on Craigslist to produce cheaper ads. But he’s proven to be a media chameleon. At 82, he’s found a new home on YouTube, where his channel has over 340,000 subscribers. In fact, he’s so active that he uploaded a new video while I was writing this.
*The Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival is one of the most prestigious documentary film festivals in the world, but my film—which was just a college project—was selected as part of a showcase of local documentaries made in Arkansas.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/14/AR2007071401118_5.html
https://vvaveteran.org/39-3/39-3_lesko.html
https://www.washingtonian.com/2024/07/05/the-free-money-guy-on-how-he-got-his-start-and-those-crazy-suits/
https://www.warc.com/content/feed/jingles-still-top-performing-distinctive-brand-asset/en-GB/9830
https://www.thedrum.com/news/2023/05/03/how-many-ads-do-we-really-see-day-spoiler-it-s-not-10000
https://marketingscience.info/ehrenberg-bass-95-of-b2b-buyers-are-not-in-the-market-for-your-products/#:~:text=Ehrenberg%2DBass:%2095%25%20of,Bass%20Institute%20for%20Marketing%20Science
https://www.thedrum.com/news/2025/05/07/the-next-attention-revolution-here-says-dr-karen-nelson-field
https://www.andersoncollaborative.com/knowledge-base/ad-skipping-rate-understanding-why-viewers-skip-ads-and-how-to-reduce-it/
https://www.marketingweek.com/15-brand-assets-truly-distinctive-finds-research/
https://system1group.com/blog/effectiveness-of-characters-in-insurance-advertising
https://mumbrella.com.au/the-unbearable-lightness-of-buying-as-told-by-an-old-jar-of-pesto-550525
Heath, Robert. Seducing The Subconscious